


A Mournful Rustling

by otter



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:11:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otter/pseuds/otter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Learning to breathe without drowning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mournful Rustling

Daniel stared at the floor, and his fingers tapped out what might've been "La Cucaracha" against the arm of his chair.

"Daniel," said the man sitting across from him, with all the patience that comes from a lifetime of dealing with the mentally ill. "This doesn't help anyone if we don't talk."

The tune changed to a not-in-any-way-recognizable percussion-only imitation of "I Fall To Pieces." Daniel looked up and said, "Hm. Maybe we ought to just call it off, then. I wouldn't want to waste your time."

MacKenzie smiled that smug little smile that always made Daniel wish for a convenient rampaging Unas to put at least one of them out of their misery. "Tell me what happened on your mission today."

Daniel shrugged, which threw off his already atrocious rhythm, so he began anew with "I Shot The Sherriff." There were bongoes, but only in his head.

"We went to P7X-329," he said. "The weather was nice. Turns out all the people there have intestinal worms -- not like Goa'uld, but like the ones dogs get -- which actually help them digest the incredibly disgusting plant matter they eat for every meal. It's really kind of fascinating. If you're a biology geek."

"That is interesting," MacKenzie replied, in a tone that directly contradicted the opinion expressed. "But it's not why we're here. What happened to *you* today?"

Daniel "hmmmm"'ed, as if he was thinking about it, and then said, "Well, actually, my alarm didn't go off this morning so I was a little late, but I don't think anybody noticed. Before the mission I finished a translation from P2X-996, where they speak Bamileke; that's a language spoken in Cameroon here on Earth. That was harder than it sounds, because the linguistics department doesn't have the budget to hire any more translators and we really need somebody with an African specialization--"

"You experienced some sort of psychotic episode on P7X-329," MacKenzie interrupted, "a full-blown visual and auditory hallucination in the middle of a mission."

"I don't see why you have to call it a 'psychotic episode'," Daniel said. "And actually we were in the middle of a poppy field. They were bright red and went on for miles; I wish I'd taken a picture."

"Colonel O'Neill was sufficiently concerned by your behavior to abort the mission. He was worried about you enough to actually admit to what had happened, though I understand you'd asked all of them not to say anything about it."

Daniel muttered, "Narc," in the most affectionate way possible.

MacKenzie was writing industriously on his notepad as he said, "Your teammates are justifiably worried for your health. General Hammond has revoked your field status until I clear you. So we can dance around this all you want, but you're grounded until I'm satisfied." Daniel wondered what he was writing. Not case notes, certainly. Maybe a shopping list, or a harlequin romance. "Are you going to talk to me? Or are we going to call it quits and you can cool your heels until you're in a more cooperative mood?"

Daniel had to think about it for a good long while, listening to the scratching of the shrink's pen against paper and the faint ticking of the clock on the wall, which was three minutes fast. Finally he said, "I saw a woman."

The noise from the pen stopped and MacKenzie looked up. The clock kept ticking. "Someone you know?"

He started to shake his head, then thought better of it. "I don't know. How should I know who I know anymore, who I met in the year I was gone? I didn't recognize her, though. I just thought she was one of the locals, even though she was dressed very differently than the villagers we were talking to. I said hello; I didn't think anything of it."

MacKenzie grunted and leaned forward. "And then what?"

"She said something like, 'I'm afraid that time has passed. You should go now.' I asked her what she was talking about, but she didn't answer me. She was looking at me, talking to me like she knew I was there, but nothing I'd said had registered with her; we were having two different conversations. She said, 'Follow the coastal road. It will take you there.' But we were hundreds of miles from any oceans. I asked her what the coastal road was, and where it went." He paused, and his fingers tapped out a few bars of "Leaving On A Jet Plane" and he sucked in a breath. "I looked over at Jack like, 'What's up with this,' you know, and that's when I noticed that everybody was looking at me like... like I was crazy. I realized they couldn't see her. When I looked back, she was gone."

"Do *you* think you're crazy, Doctor Jackson?" MacKenzie asked. The slightly bemused expression on his face made it seem like a rhetorical question.

Daniel scowled. "Of course not. What exactly in my history would make me think I was crazy? The invisible aliens? The time I was out of phase? The delusions induced by alien technology? Maybe the fact that I travel across the galaxy every other day. On the list of possible explanations in the whole wide universe for strange events, 'I am crazy' actually ranks pretty low on the list."

MacKenzie smiled his very serious and compassionate 'I humor you because you're nuts' smile, and said, "Alright, Daniel. I'll make you a deal. I know you don't like me, and I know you don't like being here." He paused, and the pen scratched again for a moment. Daniel wondered if that was his cue to disagree. "Whatever you saw, I certainly wouldn't want to rule out the possibility that it was *not* a delusion, and I would agree that another explanation is more likely. So I'm going to clear you to return to active duty on base beginning tomorrow, with General Hammond's approval. But I have conditions."

Daniel's fingers played snatches of "The 1812 Overture" and his thumb provided makeshift cannon blasts against the leather upholstery. "Of course you have conditions," he agreed, sourly.

"The first," the doctor continued, undaunted, "is that if you do experience any more episodes like this one, you report them immediately. I know you're close to Colonel O'Neill, and he is your CO, so I'm expecting you to talk to him if this happens again, on Earth or off. I'll make sure he keeps me apprised of your status, but for the moment we'll work under the assumption that this is an outside influence, and if there's a reoccurence we'll investigate other avenues first."

"Okay," Daniel agreed, because he didn't really have much choice anyway. "What else?"

"No off-world missions for a week," MacKenzie said. "Just to be sure. If you're doing alright next week, we'll talk about putting you back in the field. Sound fair?"

"Not really," Daniel said, abandoning his chair and heading for the door. "But I guess it's the best I'm going to get."

Outside MacKenzie's office, in the narrow hallway at the back of the infirmary, a pale little boy looked up at Daniel and said, in antiquated French, "Oh, no. You can't do that. They're all gone now."

Daniel didn't answer; he thought that MacKenzie would probably hear him through the door. The boy bit his lip, as if to keep himself from crying, and when Daniel blinked, he was gone.

\---

"Well? What do you think?" Sam's grin was wide and toothy on a level that approached manic. She had her hands on her hips, her short hair was ruffled by chilly autumn breeze, and she looked so damned enthused, he knew it ought to be infectious, but Daniel just wasn't feeling it.

"It's not powered by naquadah, is it?" Daniel asked, skeptically. "There's not a jet engine hiding in there somewhere?"

Sam socked him in the arm, just hard enough to sting a little, and growled, "It's perfectly safe, Doctor. I mean, I know it's not a broken-down Volvo or anything, but..."

Daniel winced. "What *did* you do with my car, anyway?"

"We donated it to one of those charities that take cars," she replied. Her careless shrug clearly advertised that she couldn't care less what had happened to his former vehicle, since it was clearly not fit to even be parked on the same block as his new one.

Daniel had figured that eventually he'd get a new car; some sort of boring sedan, or an SUV to get him to the mountain even in Colorado winter weather. For the moment, carpooling with Jack and occasionally dipping into the base motorpool was suiting him just fine.

Sam, on the other hand, firmly believed that he was repressing himself. Before she'd presented the gift, she'd given him an eloquent speech about freedom and the open road. It had actually seemed fairly impressive at the time, until he'd actually gotten out to the street and seen her gift parked at the curb; now he was mostly thinking that there was no way he was going to ride that thing and live to tell about it.

Sensing his reluctance -- probably because it was written all over his face -- she gave the motorcycle's seat a loving caress and said, low and sultry, "Come on, Daniel. You know you wanna."

"Wanna die in a fiery inferno of horror? Not really." He took a firm step back and eyed the bike as he might've eyed a rabid dog. "I appreciate it, Sam. Really, I do. But I don't think I can accept this. I mean, a motorcycle? Come on. This is *me*."

"Oh, it's *totally* you," Sam agreed, in a completely contradictory sort of way. She gave the leather another stroke, and let her fingers drift down to fondle chrome. "Siler and I built it custom, just for you. You'll love it. Remember, Daniel, I was with you in that jeep in Egypt. You drove like a maniac. I know you've got an inner adrenaline junkie, just waiting to be released."

He guessed that 'dubious' was too weak a word to describe both his feelings and his expression. His eyebrows felt independently mobile. "Sam--"

"One ride! I'll drive, and all you have to do is sit on the back and hold on. Come on, Daniel. It'll be great. We can go get some lunch; I know this amazing little diner just off the 25. You'll love it, and we'll be back before you know it." He must not have seemed convinced, because she finally abandoned the shiny motorcycle and sauntered over to wrap him in a hug, instead. "For me?" she implored, and when she went so far as to bat her eyelashes at him, he knew he was done for. And he had to admit, the bike *did* look really cool, and it'd probably be really fun to ride it. Until the fiery inferno of horror part happened, anyway.

"Alright," he said, begrudgingly. "One ride, then you take it far, far away where it can't threaten my life anymore."

She pouted at him in a decidedly un-Major-like way, frowned, and finally said, "Okay. I've got helmets here, but you're going to need a jacket; let's go back up and grab your things, and then we'll hit the open road. Freedom, Daniel! Freedom!"

In the elevator on the way up, she extolled the bike's virtues at length, but he was neither a mechanic nor an enthusiast, and he only understood every fifth word. He was just nodding and smiling at her indulgently when he opened the door to his apartment to fetch his jacket.

Except the door to his apartment didn't open into his apartment anymore. The space was smaller, cramped, the walls flaking and orange-tinted, the windows replaced by light fixtures in the walls. Jack was standing there, wearing strange, torn clothes and looking worn.

Daniel took one faltering step inside, and turned to find the door and Sam completely gone. "Jack? What are you doing here? Where are we?"

Jack said, "Any minute, they're gonna come." His voice sounded rough, stretched thin. "Baal is gonna kill me again. You can make it the last time."

"What? No, I... Jack, what's going on? What is this?" He wanted to move closer, to reach out and touch Jack and see if he was real, but fear kept him rooted where he stood.

"You can put an end to it," Jack said. There was such a yearning and pleading in his voice that it made Daniel's chest ache. "I'd do it for you, and you know it."

Daniel finally made himself take a step forward, and another, reaching out a hand to touch Jack's arm, but the man was moving away, arranging himself on the floor. He said, "I don't want to see this cell again, Daniel," and then the world seemed to tilt sickeningly, and Daniel was standing in his apartment, sucking in heaving breaths, with Sam's arm around his shoulders holding him upright.

Her face was pale and drawn; all the carefree quality that had been there minutes ago had leeched away. Her hand was cold when it touched his cheek. "Daniel?" she said, almost as if she was afraid to hear the answer.

He forced himself to breathe, closed his eyes and then opened them again. He was still in his apartment. Sam was still holding onto him. Thank God. "I think," he said hesitantly, and his voice was as rough as Jack's had been, "I think maybe we should postpone lunch and go see Jack instead. I need to talk to him."

Sam nodded, grave and anxious, and led him back to the elevator as if he were her frail old granny. Out on the street, she passed up the motorcycle and led him to the black sedan he'd borrowed that day from the base. Daniel sank into the plush passenger seat, cranked up the heat, and shivered all the way to Jack's house.

\---

Daniel blinked at the offering that was placed before him, and said, very carefully so as not to wound any feelings, "Jack, it's hallucinations, not chicken pox."

Jack looked at Daniel, then at the steaming bowl he'd just placed on the table. "So... no soup, then?"

Daniel sighed and picked up his spoon. "Well," he said, "Far be it from me to turn down a free meal."

The smile that stretched Jack's lips was tight and uncomfortable, but he managed to look almost relaxed as he dropped into the opposite chair. He glanced back over his shoulder at Sam, who was pacing the hallway and muttering into the phone. "You really freaked her out," he said, conversationally.

Daniel winced, and tried to cover it up by slurping up another spoonful of watery chicken broth. "Yeah, well, I kind of freaked myself out, too. I mean, up until now I'd been kind of assuming that maybe these were actual people I'd been seeing, who were for whatever reason visible only to me. Or that, I don't know, they were ghosts or something."

A eloquently raised eyebrow advertised Jack's opinion long before his mouth opened to say, "Ghosts, Daniel?"

"What, like we've never seen anything weird before?" And he didn't care if that sounded whiny and defensive, either.

"Hey, I'm just sayin'. Have you seen Patrick Swayze yet?"

"No. But anyway, they're not ghosts. I get that now." Daniel looked down at his soup and abruptly lost his appetite. He put the spoon down. "You know, I read the report from when Kanaan... the thing with Baal's fortress."

Jack grimaced and looked down at his hands, splayed his fingers flat against the tabletop as if he had to hold on or be swept away. "Yeah?"

"You didn't tell anyone that I was there."

Jack looked up, blinked, and grudgingly admitted. "No. Well, I told them later. At the time I thought you might've possibly been a delusion."

"Well, it's nice to know I'm not the only one," Daniel said. "Did you tell them that you asked me to kill you?"

There was a long, heavy pause, as Jack traced the grain of the wood in his kitchen tabletop with his eyes. Then, finally, very softly, "No. I didn't tell anyone that."

Daniel opened his mouth to answer, but Sam chose that moment to join them, dropping into an empty chair and looking decidedly deflated. So he said, "Sorry I scared you, Sam."

She scowled. "I wasn't scared. I'm a Major. We don't get scared."

Daniel smiled down at his soup, took a deep breath and said, "Well, don't worry. It's not like we haven't dealt with this before, and that all turned out okay."

Jack gave Sam a look, Sam gave him one back, and then Jack said, "Um, Goa'uld in your closet?"

It took all of Daniel's considerable patience and understanding to resist throttling the man. "I was thinking more along the lines of Rya'c's voice from thin air. I think this is the same thing as before, memories coming to the surface from my time among the Ascended. It's just that now it's a little... more."

"Dazzling technicolor," Jack added, helpfully. "Digital surround sound."

"Something like that," Daniel agreed. The coffee maker clicked itself off, signalling that it was finished brewing, and he got up to pour himself a cup. The smell of it cleared his head a little, but the little bit of soup he'd had was like a weight in his stomach. He sat back down and peered into his mug as if the meaning of life was written at the bottom, hidden underneath the coffee.

"So... what'd you do last time?" Jack asked. "You know, to get the memories back?"

"I meditated with Teal'c," Daniel said. "But it hasn't worked this time. I've been sitting kel-no-reem with him practically every night since the boy in the hallway. I was hoping one of them would come back and talk to me while I was in a meditative state, but nothing--"

"'Boy in the hallway?'" Jack interrupted. He leaned forward over the table and took on that squinty-eyed, deeply suspicious look that he did so well. "'One of them?' Daniel?"

Dismissing the incident with a wave of the hand, Daniel said, "I saw something right after my session with MacKenzie. Thanks for that, by the way."

The accusatory tone horribly failed to divert Jack's attention. "And how many of these little episodes have you had that you didn't think I ought to know about?"

Daniel made a great show of trying to recall, though he was mostly trying to think of a way out of the conversation. Finally he admitted, "Two. Okay, three." Jack gave him the eye, the same way his foster mother used to, dripping with disappointment that made any real punishment completely unnecessary. Daniel figured it must be a parent thing, that they could all shoot Guilt Rays from their eyeballs. "Four."

Skillfully slipping in to stave off the impending explosion, Sam said, "Well, this is way more of a problem than last time. I mean, before it was just like a nagging thought you couldn't remember. Now it's affecting your ability to function. There's no way you can go out into the field like this."

Daniel sipped at his coffee, and when he grunted his agreement the sound echoed hollowly back at him from the mug. "I was sort of hoping that these events might mean the memories are starting to really return, but it's been a week and they haven't really gotten more frequent or more enlightening. I've been hoping that when all of the memories return, my subconscious will take a break and the hallucinations will stop. On the way over here I got to thinking maybe we could help the process along."

Sam frowned at him and stole his coffee, gulping down a mouthful before handing it back again. "How?"

"Well, what did we do when you had to remember about Jolinar?"

Sam blinked rapidly as if she'd been sitting in a dark room and somebody had suddenly switched the lights on. "The Tok'ra memory device. God, it's so obvious. Why didn't we think of it before?"

Jack said, "Please. You two can't be geniuses *all* the time. Makes me look bad."

\---

Daniel knew that there were worse places to be than the familiar confines of the infirmary, with Janet clucking over him, Anise fidgeting, Jacob and General Hammond both smiling that strained proud-papa smile, and his own teammates all clustered in one corner, scowling a lot and looking protective.

He just wished that there wasn't also a pile of gory corpses in the middle of the room, leaking blood and entrails all over the floor and staring at him with eyes that didn't see anymore.

He was trying very hard not to look at all, but this particular vision -- memory -- was accompanied by a smell that was heavy and rancid, and he couldn't get the taste of it off his tongue.

"So," he said, a little too brightly. "I'm having some fantastically horrific hallucinations even as we speak, so could we please get started? Now-ish?"

His own smile was tight, and when Anise stepped forward, hers was only slightly better. "Anise and I are uncertain as to the effects of the device in your particular situation, Doctor Jackson," the host said, earnestly. "With your permission, we would like to use the holographic imager, to help us monitor your condition."

Daniel winced and studied the floor. A thin trail of blood was winding its way toward him from the stack of bodies, and there was a stench of burning flesh now, as well, and a blast of heat; the pile was igniting as if someone had set a torch to it. "No," he said, quietly. "I want to retain a little privacy, here. And if what I'm seeing now is any indication of what I'm going to remember, I don't think you want to see it, anyway."

"But we must--"

"*No,*" Daniel asserted. "Just... no. Let's get on with it."

Anise finally subsided, unhappily, and pressed the little metal disc against his temple. The pain was sharp, just as he remembered it, and he was still trying to get his eyes to focus again when Anise raised the controller.

"We will begin on a medium setting," she said. "If the memories are too intense, or you feel too much pain, simply tell me so and I will lower the setting."

Daniel said, "Isn't any pain too much pa--" and then he was gone.

\---

Under the water, it's utterly quiet and calm, like a dream. Schools of fish swim beneath him, and their unified motion is slow and lazy. An octopus glides from one rock to another and slowly changes color to match its new perch. Down on the sandy sea bottom, a tiny crab snaps at one of its brethren with a threatening claw, then scuttles away.

Daniel is warm, relaxed, and completely at peace.

A voice says, "Alright, Doctor Jackson. Concentrate." The sound is muffled, maybe by the water, but it's clear enough to hear. He wants to ask what he's supposed to concentrate on, but then he'd have to open his mouth, and the water would flood in around his snorkel. The voice says, "You must concentrate on what you wish to remember." But he can't remember what he wants to remember, and he can't imagine what he might've forgotten. The voice says, "I will lower the setting, Doctor Jackson," and he thinks, 'Oh, good,' though he isn't quite sure why that's good.

He remembers when the water vanishes. He's no longer floating in the ocean, taking a well-earned break from the excavation in the Yucatan. Ascension, he thinks; he's supposed to be remembering ascension.

He hears himself say, "Okay. That's better," and then he's somewhere else, and he wishes to be back in the ocean.

The coastal road is long and narrow; it begins at Corinth, and it follows the wind-swept edge of the cliffs all the way to Eretria. He does not walk the road so much as fly above it; travel is faster without a body, but it still takes time, and he's still learning how to control movement that isn't governed by elementary physics. His flight is shaky and uncertain, like that of a young bird just leaving the nest, but he is careful to move slowly, so that when the little township of Megara appears on the horizon, he does not overshoot it.

The fires have burned down to embers, which glow bright red and send up little wavering banners of smoke from the remains of Megara. When Daniel suddenly appears on the steps of the amphitheater, there are no living eyes left to see him. Daniel has made himself in the image of what he once was, and he's even conjured up senses because they're still the only way for him to experience the world in a way he can understand.

Oma has told him that with time, he will adjust to his new abilities and be able to utilize them fully; she says he'll be able to cast off the last tattered garments of humanity. He looks forward to that day, and fears it at the same time.

Today, he wishes for the detachment that Oma displays, because he isn't sure that he wants to know the sight of the bodies piled high on the stage. He doesn't want to smell the burning-flesh stench, and he doesn't want to carry any of those sense-memories with him into an existence that is, as far as he can discern, eternal.

But he moves down the theater steps, anyway, and onto the stage; he walks slowly among the dead, squeezes shut his eyes which aren't really eyes, and wishes that he could weep.

\---

He opened his eyes and found Jack O'Neill standing far too close, leaning in and peering at Daniel's face.

Jack said, "Oh, hey. There you are," and moved back only an inch or two, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"Yeah," Daniel said. "Um, I remembered something. Can we try that again?"

Jack moved to one side to make room for Anise, who offered up that earnest smile again and said, "The device is still on, Doctor Jackson; I have reduced the setting, but to continue, all you need to do is clear your mind, and concentrate on what you wish to recall."

Daniel said, "Right. Concentrate."

He looked at Jack, who gave him a pained smile in return, and stood close enough that Daniel could feel the heat of his body.

Daniel said, "Okay," then cleared his mind, concentrated, and faded away.

\---

Anubis says, "Strike me down. Do it now or I will destroy Abydos," and it's not just a gloat, it's a dare.

Raw power gathers in Daniel's hands, feeding upon itself, building and building until it's enough not just to kill a man, but to put out the sun. He cradles it in his palms and it feels good, like nothing he's ever experienced. It feels even better to let it loose, to send it flying toward the hooded figure on the throne.

It rebounds back at him, and he has time only to shout, "No! Don't do this!" before Oma bears him away.

He fears the Others, but he fears her even more.

Far away from anything in creation, far beyond the light of stars, Oma tells him that she cannot allow him to draw the attention of the Others, and then she holds him still and begins binding up little pieces of him, like knotting strings around fingers so tight that eventually they'll die and fall away. She says nothing when she leaves him, immobile and alone in the middle of the nothingness.

She does not return. No one comes for what seems like a very long time, until finally one of the Others appears, touches him gently, but by then Daniel is completely insane.

Daniel says, "No, no," and struggles to call up some other memory, one that doesn't end with him naked and terribly blank, curled up in the dust of an alien planet. The memories are coming faster now, sharper, almost painful, as if they're ripping their way free of his brain tissue, leaving bleeding wounds in their wake.

He crouches in front of Teal'c, though the meditating Jaffa can't see him, and whispers very quietly, "The Tauri don't have the resources to attack Baal's fortress. But Yu does."

Skaara is standing in the tent, looking so much older and stronger than he ever has. He says, "No one will be safe anywhere. How can we even hope to defend ourselves against a Goa'uld as powerful as Anubis?"

"Look at me Doc," Teal'c says, but he's not Teal'c, at the same time. "I'm the healthiest damn human being you've ever seen and you know it. I'm a hundred percent."

Orlin takes a human shape to stand beside Daniel in a sea of children. He asks, "Where are their parents?" and Daniel says, "Taken by Anubis' Jaffa, to work mining trinium." One of the children asks, in rustic French, whether Daniel will stay, and when the pale little boy reaches out to take Daniel's hand, his fingers encounter only air where flesh should be.

He blows water from his snorkel and turns his head to look at the reef, which is why he doesn't even notice the shark until it's so close, he can feel the ripples of its passing. It doesn't move or turn or even acknowledge his existence, but the very nearness of it nearly kills him, as he gasps in water instead of air.

Oma says, "Human existence is made of suffering. It is not our part to change their fate."

Jack says, "If you were really my friend and had the power to stop it, you'd stop it!"

Then the trickle of memories becomes a flood, and the images and sounds splatter and mingle and slosh against one another, falling like water from pitcher to basin. The weight of them crushes his chest, and when he finally breaks free, he's gasping for breath as if he's drowning. He hears Sam's voice from far away, telling him to calm down and breathe deep, but he can't, and then he's aware of nothing.

\---

The VIP quarters smelled faintly of flowers, like autumn, when plants began to wither and shrivel and die. Daniel opened his eyes, blinked at the ceiling, and said, "Huh."

A Jack-shaped shadow next to the bed responded, "Huh?"

Daniel sat up and rubbed at his bleary eyes, then looked around for his glasses. Jack offered them to him, and when the world was in focus again, Daniel spent some time staring at the wall.

"You know," he finally said, "non-interventionist policies aside, I guess the Others aren't so bad."

Jack pursed his lips and waited, silent.

"Although," Daniel said, "Ascended beings on the whole are a lot scarier than I thought."

Jack said, "Bad?" and Daniel said, "Yeah," so Jack moved from the chair to the bed, and slung an arm around Daniel's shoulders.

"How much did you get back?" Jack asked. His breath gusted across Daniel's cheek, and the feel of him was warm and solid everywhere that he touched Daniel's body.

"All of it," Daniel said.

Jack made an impressed noise and said, "Oh. Good plan, then." He paused, as if savoring Daniel's sad little smile, then said, "You want to talk about it?"

He said, "No. Maybe later," and breathed as if he'd forgotten how to do it without drowning. "Jack?"

"Yeah?"

Daniel rubbed at the little sore spot on his temple where the memory device had been. "I'm sorry."

Jack just smiled, gave him one final squeeze, and then stood. "Get some rest. I hear meatloaf is on the menu for lunch tomorrow, so you'll need your strength." He hesitated in the doorway, then finally turned to go, flipping out the lights with his fingers. "Goodnight, Daniel," he said.

"Goodnight, Jack," Daniel answered. Jack closed the door and left him in darkness.

"They've all gone away," said the pale little boy in the corner, who wasn't really there at all.

Daniel lay back on the bed, squeezed his eyes shut, and reminded himself to breathe.

the end


End file.
